Monday, 18 May 2015

It is
said God cannot be everywhere so He created Mother. How true it is!!

She was never the type of mother that
we visualize today- always having an eye on every move of the child. She was
not educated enough to take care of my homework while I was in school. She was
not sophisticated enough to project a good image of our family in the society
around her. She was not a very good chef either. She did not have any of the
qualities a modern day mom is supposed to have. But still she loved me so much
that I often felt breathless. An uneducated rustic village woman having
unconditional blind love for her male offspring (Yes, it is true. She always
neglected her female child) – that’s how I would describe my Maa.

My father and mother were poles apart.
I still fail to understand if marriages are really made in heaven how God
ventured to unite these two opposite poles. Since my infancy I have watched my
parents fighting on trivial issues. My father was educated and served in the
town and valued education the most. We were four in all –three brothers and one
sister. My mother loved to be in the village and had no regard for education.
She wanted all of us to work hard and carry forward the ancestral family name.
Whereas my father wished all of us be educated and lead better lives away from
the village. This was probably the major reason of the continual conflict
between our parents. Needless to say finally my father’s ruling over ruled and
we all children got the best of education and moved out of the village to
settle down in life.

This post is intended for Mother’s Day
and I should focus more on my mother. As already mentioned, my mother had a
special place in her heart for the male children. I was the eldest followed by
our only sister and two brothers. My mother loved me the most followed by my
other two brothers. I often felt she had no love for my only sister. She would
make my sister help her in household chores since she was hardly four years
old. By the time she attained the age of ten my sister was able to cook for the
entire family. My mother would never allow her to study at home after school
hours. She would never give her a good meal. Special items would be preserved
for the sons and only the left out items would be given to the girl child. In
other words my mother was an epitome of discrimination towards the girl child,
her own daughter. As I grew up I resented this behavior of my mother and openly
complained against her discriminating attitude. And as time elapsed I started
disliking my mother for the ill treatment she meted out towards my sister.
Although she continued to have intense blind love towards me I gradually got detached
from her and joined hands with my father to ensure that my sister also received
equivalent education as we, the brothers got. I am not sure what my younger
brothers felt at that time (Or are feeling now) about this discriminating
attitude of our mother. But I certainly felt rebellious and started getting
away from Maa. As I grew up I developed a sense of loathing towards my mother
and the emotional yawning gap between us widened. And as on today I have not
been able to reduce that gap and although I have enough love and respect for my
mother I find it really difficult to express the same before her.

My mother has not changed at all over
last five decades. She continues to be her old self and continues to judge
girls as lesser human beings compared to boys. I do not expect her to change at
her ripe age now. But I do love my mother as she is. And I know even today she
will fight against the entire world to protect me. She can sacrifice her life
to see her sons happy. The only vice for which I dislike her is that she does
not have similar feelings for her own daughter. She is probably a living
example of a woman being the greatest enemy of her own species.

I do not know what prompted me to write
this post today. Probably I got a chance to vent out my feelings preserved in
my heart over decades. But my Maa I have nothing against you. I love you and I
am sorry if I have hurt you by speaking my heart out. I am sure you will
forgive me for this audacity.

Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Life has become so fast with the
advancing fast technology that it is now difficult to concentrate on one job at
a time. Time seems to have reduced drastically from the usual 24 hours a day.
Gone are the days when people used to take out exclusive hours from their daily
routine to visit banks for deposit or withdrawal of money, post offices for
posting letters and parcels, bill paying counters for paying telephone, water, gas,
electricity etc. bills, rail reservation counters for booking journey tickets. I
wonder how we were able to find time for doing all these petty jobs and that
too standing in queues for hours together.

With technology advancing by leaps and
bounds and internet becoming an essential part of human existence, today’s
teenagers refuse to believe the above facts. The smart phones have brought in a
sea change in the urban lifestyle. Before the advent of these “smartees” less
than a decade ago people used to sit before a desktop or laptop to do banking,
mailing and bill paying jobs. But today with the introduction of mobile banking
and several mobile apps for bill payments etc via surfing the net on the go
life has become much easier and comfortable. People now do not waste precious
time in sending mails or making bill payments or booking tickets. They now do
these petty jobs on their smart phones while travelling to work place or while
doing things like dining, watching TV, or while taking a stroll after dinner or even while on a ‘morning walk’ work out.
Mobile wallets have made life still more comfortable by their unique features of
ease for online payments and money transfers. Airtel Money was the first wallet I had used to pay for online recharge
of my prepaid Airtel mobile phones to get 10% extra talk time on recharges.

On 1st May 2005Bharti Airtel kicked off a season of savings on its 'My Airtel' mobile application
for all its prepaid customers across India. This App has several attractive
features to lure the customers towards airtel in this competitive market of
telcom service providers.As the chief Product Officer, Bharati Airtel(India) puts it, “The ‘My
Airtel’ application has been designed to follow an intuitive and easy to use
interface which allows customers to conveniently discover, access and
self-manage Airtel services across mobile, fixed line and DTH platforms”. Among
all the features offered by this app I like the following three features the
most.

1.The uniquenew ‘shake your phone’ feature which is designed to offer a fun wayto uncover new offers. Just shake the phone and listen to sound of
savings after every recharge.

2.PCI DSS certification makes the
my Airtel app the most Safe, Secure to recharge & pay bills and allows
fastest checkouts with card store feature for prepaid online mobile, Digital TV
DTH and data card / dongle recharges, postpaid online mobile bill payment etc.
I have used this feature to a lot of advantage and added all the prepaid mobile
accounts of my entire family to do recharges from one place.

3.With the shortcut
creating feature I have saved my most frequent tasks on home screen
as shortcuts under the ‘I want to’ tab for paying bills, recharging, ordering
games, viewing balances and checking consumption of 2G/3G data.

It
goes without saying that the new My Airtel App is a unique app with several
interesting features any Airtel user will love to use. More details on this app
is available athttp://www.airtel.in/myairtel

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

The legendary Kapil Dev, the cricketer
par excellence, is ready with something novel and magical which is still a
mystery. The first World Cup winning cricket captain of India has made his
debut on twitter with a bang “#EkNayiLeague”. And it is really a Himalayan task
for me to guess what this new league is all about. The whole country in general
and the bloggers community in particular is wondering prolifically about the
composition and content of this new league. It’s a challenge for everybody to
guess what the cricketing legend is talking about.

Kapil Dev is challenging the
celebrities in every sphere of activity namely, sports, cinema, TV, cricket,
journalism, politics etc. to play and win in his new league. And the challenge
is doubled when he says that if you play with your heart you are destined to be
out hit wicket. Now I really wonder “what is that pitch where he is going to
bowl his googlies? And how the celebrities are going to face them??” I guess
Kapil is all set to host a new talk show with a cricketing idiolect. And
probably he is going to bowl googly like questions involving too much personal
and emotional issues to his guests either individually or collectively. If the batters
in front of him play those questions without much seriousness then they win.
But if on the other hand they take them(the questions) too seriously and too
personally they would probably be bowled over.

There is an age-old adage which says if
one puts one’s head and heart together in a particular thing/work one can
create a master piece. But if one uses only his heart to perform the job he is
liable to commit mistakes. That’s why managers are often advised to make
decisions with their head rather than with heart. Put both of them together and
you come out with the perfect decision. No wonder Kapil Dev in his prime days
had put his head and heart together to win the ICC World Cup in 1983. He never
played with his heart alone. He enjoyed his game and in other words had reached
the Self Actualization stage of Abraham Maslow’s Need Hierarchy. Anybody who
excels in a particular field of activity is definitely a self actualized person
who draws inspiration from within and does not need any extrinsic motivation.
Kapil is such a achiever in international cricketing arena and a source of
inspiration for all and sundry.

The very thought that such a legend is
coming up with a novel, inspiring talk show challenging celebrities in
different fields of activity is really amusing. And right now I can foresee a
more popular host than the Big B (of KBC fame) on the Indian entertainment TV. We
have seen Kapil on TV as cricket commentator and now it is time for his debut
in a entertainment TV channel. I intently look forward to see Big B facing
Kapil’s googlies on the small screen pitch and packing them over the field for
six. Or will Kapil have him “hit wicket”?